Alphabet Revenue Rises as It Reports Loss Due to Tax Charge

For the entire 2017 fiscal year, Alphabet provided figures of $110.8 billion in revenue, and this is the first time at the company has been able to come up with triple-figure digits.

Amazon shares were down almost 4% in regular trading but jumped by that much after it reported better than forecast sales and earnings figures, and made upbeat forecasts about the current quarter.

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) opened at $1,181.59 on Friday.

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL) released its Q4 2017 earnings report after closing bell tonight.

Alphabet did not hit its US$9.98 consensus.

Google executives also said that progress at its self-driving auto unit Waymo was “accelerating”, and that it was the first company to have a fleet of cars navigating public roads without humans in the driver seats.

An increasing amount of revenue has been needed to have the search engine by Google set up as a default option for services and products such as the iPhone and Firefox browser.

But the path forward remains foggy.

Google now has $100.8 billion on hand in cash and cash equivalents including marketable securities.

Alphabet shares fell by over 5% in Thursday afterhours trading prior to steady at a loss of 2.7%.

But threats from Facebook Inc and Amazon.com Inc loom. In the year-ago quarter, the Google parent reported $26.06 billion in revenue.

“They’re topping expectations in terms of driving new demand to the platform and becoming more profitable”, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co.

Google Cloud is now a $1 billion per quarter business, CEO Sundar Pichai told investors Thursday.

In explaining the tax’s impact, Alphabet cited $9.9 billion in extra taxation from a “one-time transition tax on accumulated foreign subsidiary earnings and deferred tax impacts”.

Apple sold 77.3 million iPhones during the 3 months, down 1 percent from a year earlier. That’s a 27 percent jump from a year ago, according to the National Retail Foundation. Losses of $916m versus last year’s $1.09bn is an encouraging sign.

Excluding the tax provision – following the lead of other multinationals taking advantage of a favorable rate to repatriate earnings – Alphabet would have posted a profit of US$6.8 billion. Google has attributed the surge in that expense to the rising number of ads it runs on YouTube, mobile devices and automated systems that require sharing more money with partners.

“The company’s continued strong top-line growth and myriad new opportunities to drive future growth remain the keys to the stock”, MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson said in an email.

Plus, although Google paid more in TAC on its own properties because of high costs in mobile search, it said it expects TAC to stabilize in the following quarter. In other words, it’s costing Google more and more to get customers to spend more, a trend that’s been in place for quite a while now.